Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
The process of restoring the house of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity (PIKE) into a livable facility is underway, and state inspectors may decide as soon as next week when brothers can return to the building.
Sundance Campbell, president of PIKA Corporation, a nonprofit alumni organization in charge of the PIKE house at the University of Maine, met Tuesday with officials from Orono code enforcement as well as the Office of the Maine State Fire Marshal to discuss the next step in the process of getting brothers back into the house.
“I had a meeting with the fire chief and Mr. Campbell Tuesday afternoon,” William Murphy, Orono code enforcement officer, said. “Mr. Campbell requested that the fire chief schedule that meeting, and they had been looking to reopen the house within 10 days to two weeks. I told him that we still need to do all of the inspections, and we need to contact the state fire marshal and the state electrical inspector.”
Orono code enforcement deemed the house unfit for inhabitation on Sept. 13 after state fire inspector Hector Cyr discovered multiple issues in the house and called Murphy to the scene, where he confirmed violations of safety and fire codes.
PIKE brothers were forced to leave the house within hours of the decision and have been living in housing provided by UMaine. They will not be allowed to inhabit the building until the house is up to code.
“Simply enough, they have to correct all the violations,” Murphy said.
PIKE brothers are itching to move back into their building but are taking it one day at a time in order to avoid any type of letdown, chapter president John Dufour said.
“We don’t know 100 percent when we will be back in the house,” he said. “Especially when it comes to construction work like this, nothing is a 100 percent guarantee, and nothing will be easy until we get back into the house — that’s the bottom line.”
If all goes as planned, the PIKE house could be deemed fit for the brothers to return soon — assuming that the house is repaired and all violations have been dealt with.
“We’re proceeding as if we’re going to have everything done on the list within a week, week and a half,” Campbell said. “I’d hate to put a date out there in case people get their hopes up and things out of our control occur, but we’re feeling good about it.”
The list Campbell is referring to contains violations cited by the fire marshal and code enforcement.
Citations included holes in exterior walls that allowed access to the attics and walls, leaks in the ceiling of the kitchen as result of a malfunctioning drain in the second-floor bathroom, standing water in the basement due to leaks in the foundation, and a failing fire alarm system that no longer contacted EMS services due to a faulty phone connection.
The list of issues adds up to approximately 17 that PIKE must address, though not all issues need to be addressed before brothers return to the house.
“Most of the things seem to be easy fixes,” Campbell said. “The most consequential, from a money standpoint, is work on the bathroom, and that is not as much a safety issue as a quality-of-life issue.”
Campbell and PIKE brothers admit they were aware of some of the issues, but not to the severity or extent of the list of problems inside of the building.
“We were definitely aware of some of the issues,” said PIKE brother Matt Swift. “We weren’t aware of some of the little nit-picky things, like the issues with the fire codes, though.”
Campbell said that while they were aware of the issues, money was a prohibitive factor.
“We knew fixing the issues would be a challenge,” Campbell said. “Everybody recognized last spring that it needed some work to be livable, but the challenge was finding the money to do that. You can know you want to spend $3,000 on a bathroom repair, but unless you have $3,000, knowing doesn’t accomplish it.”
According to Campbell, all issues will be addressed in order to provide a higher quality of living.
“Ultimately, every one of those things will be done before the guys move back in,” he said. “The things that they’ll do after will be things that the town doesn’t care about.”
Campbell estimated that the repairs will cost more than $25,000, a sum that PIKA corporation will pay after having taken out what is essentially a mortgage to pay for the repairs.
PIKA Corporation is a nonprofit organization designed to keep the house in the hands of brothers of PIKE. The only money that is generated by PIKA Corporation comes from the flat-rate rent they charge the brothers, Campbell said.
Brothers are responsible for collecting the rent and paying PIKA Corporation. The corporation then has a fund to draw from for repairs and other costs associated with the house’s upkeep.
If brothers of a previous or current class are not responsible with their payments then future classes will be affected, and even if they are timely with payments they will not be able to bridge the gap left by previous members, according to brothers.
Campbell says the current leadership has been great at paying bills in the time he has worked with them.
“The silver lining was that we both have a lot of common ground,” Campbell said, “which [means] the chapter wants to have that house, and the corporation exists solely to provide PIKE a house.”
Bangor Daily News